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Thursday, October 20, 2016

We are delighted to announce our first ever California popup, taking place in Los Angeles this October 29th and 30th! It will consist of a day long symposium at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, a tour of the Templo Mayor de la Santa Muerte with its High Priestess, and a free book event for our new book The Anatomical Venus, also at La Luz de Jesus!

Full schedule below. Hope to see you at one or more of these great events!

Saturday, October 29th
12-6 pm
Day Long Symposium at La Luz de Jesus; Tickets and more can be found here.

Tour of Los Angeles' Templo Mayor de la Santa Muerte with the temple's high priestess and Tomas Prower, author of the book La Santa Muerte: Unearthing the Magic and Mysticism of Death. Attendees will get a tour of the temple, and have an opportunity learn all about Santa Muerte--literally "saint" or "holy" death, a female manifestation of death whose devotion originated in Mexico but has spread throughout the diaspora. Sunday, October 30
4:00 PM
The Anatomical Venus Book Event
La Luz de Jesus
FREE and non-ticketed (just show up)

Join us to celebrate the new Morbid Anatomy book The Anatomical Venus: Wax, God, Death and The Ecstatic with its author, The Morbid Anatomy Museum's co-founder and creative director Joanna Ebenstein. The book was the product of ten years of research, image collection and photography.

Learn all about the fascinating life and afterlives of The Anatomical Venus -- a life-sized dissectible wax woman with Venetian glass eyes, real human hair and strings of pearls created in late eighteenth-century Florence as the centerpiece of the first truly public science museum. Once seen as an ideal way to entice a general public into the study of human anatomy, today, she also confounds, troubling our neat categorical divides between life and death, body and soul, effigy and pedagogy, entertainment and education, kitsch and art.

Securing the Shadow: Posthumous Portraiture in America, on view at the American Folk Art Museum through February 26, 2017, is a contemplation of American self-taught portraiture through the lens of memory and loss. Curated by Stacy C. Hollander, the exhibition traces the derivation of posthumous portraiture from literal shadows traced on a wall to the metaphorical shadow secured by the photographer through postmortem daguerreotypes.

During the run of the exhibition, several public programs have been organized to reflect the scope of cultural expressions of death in the United States. These include a concert by Eli Smith, the Four O’Clock Flowers, and Mamie Minch exploring death and mourning in American folk music; a screening of Elizabeth Westrate’s 2004 documentary, A Family Undertaking, which explores the home burial movement; and a discussion with authors Meghan O’Rourke and Deborah Landau about the process of writing about grief and loss. Hands-on workshops are also part of the line-up, including a Day of the Dead papel picado demonstration and a mourning jewelry workshop.

The culmination of these programs will be How We Remember: Death in American Art and Culture, a half-day symposium in which scholars and artists come together to examine the iconography and symbolism of death in America. Participants include curator Stacy C. Hollander; Gary M. Laderman, author of The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799-1883; Dr. Stanley B. Burns, historian, collector, and author; Jessica Regan, assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute; Kate Sweeney, author of American Afterlife; and Joyce Burstein, creator of the epitaph project. Morbid Anatomy Museum’s cofounder and creative director, Joanna Ebenstein, will moderate the symposium.

Morbid Anatomy Members are invited to purchase public program tickets at the American Folk Art Museum’s membership price during the run of the Securing the Shadow exhibition.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Do you have an anatomical themed tattoo, or do you create your own? If so, might you be interested in being part of a new book? In that case, please read the call for submissions below from our artist and anatomist Emily Evans; she can be contacted at contact [at] anatomyboutiquebooks [dot] com.

We are looking for examples of anatomy related tattoos to include in our latest publication.

If you are an artist who has created an anatomical tattoo and would like to see your work published or if you have an anatomical tattoo yourself, we would love to hear from you!

Also, if you are based in the UK and interested in getting an anatomical
tattoo for free or reduced rate for use as a possible cover image, send an email to the same address, contact [at] anatomyboutiquebooks [dot] com.